On America’s birthday, the word “patriotism” gets waved around like a rhetorical flag, but what does it really mean? Some Americans express love of country by paying homage to the nation’s military might, others to its traditions of freedom and compassion, still others to the enduring genius of America’s founding documents.
It’s much easier to define what patriotism isn’t. On this Independence Day, Americans of all political stripes should be able to agree that elections must be accessible and fair, that the legitimacy of those elections must be respected regardless of outcome — and that violence is never an acceptable response from citizens who don’t like a particular election result.
Yet those fundamental principles, which are as good a definition of patriotism as any, are currently being challenged by large swaths of Americans and their political leaders. A majority of Republicans still claim to believe the corrosive lie that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president. One poll indicates close to 4 in 10 Republicans consider violence to be an acceptable tool to address perceived failures by the nation’s leaders. Patriots of conscience, regardless of party, should forcefully reject this inherently un-American mindset.
Founders’ intentionsFor all their faults (particularly on matters of race), America’s founders were able to look past the authoritarian systems of monarchy and empire in their time, and envision a form of government in which the people ruled themselves, via their elected representatives. Inherent in that radical idea was the expectation that citizens whose preferred candidates failed to win elections would accept the judgment of the constitutional process. Democracy may well be, as Winston Churchill put it, the worst form of government except for all the others, but it is the only legitimate form of government, warts and all.
